Note from Maria: This is another post (with an interview!) from Tricia, who recently (yesterday!) did her ultra-successful first S&D post about pencil cases. I *love* question five!

FACT! I am obsessed with critters, which is probably one of the reasons why I absolutely adore L. Bates Jaffe’s photography!

Her animal mask photos remind me of my favorite scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s when Holly and Fred steal animal masks from the five and dime store. The above photo is from her “animal masks” collection.

I love how she plays on proportions in her “one pill makes you smaller” and “animal crackers” collections. The naked woman is literally on the brink of being consumed by a mysterious black hole!

…and her other non-critter photographs are utterly beautiful as well. The top is a sample of her “decades” project, which features a series of 18 epoch (which sounds like EPIC..har har…) inspired photos. The bottom is a portrait of a little weeee.

And now for a special Stickers and Donuts sprinkley treat: a little Mad Libish interview with L. Bates Jaffe. (JUMP TO IT!)

Image courtesy of Meryl Swiatek

1. I am currently…

finishing up at NYU; I’m about to defend my thesis project. I’ve been restoring photos spanning the lifetime of my 90 year old grandmother. She was given a Kodak Brownie as a child and took photos all throughout the Great Depression in her small town in Indiana. I’m working with these and some later photographs to create a photo-biography. It’s really amazing to have these pictures of the Depression from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl and her siblings.

2. I would describe my style as…

a pretty dramatic split between vintage inspired classic black and white portraiture and some more surreal, childhood nostalgia inspired work. With your standard travel-the-world nonsense tossed in for good measure.

3. I’m inspired by…

plastic animal masks. When I see them this whole story about them just pops into my mind and I want to act it out. My current animal crackers project is going sort of like this. It’s starting out as a little animal crackers box and instead of cookies coming out, it’s going to be these little plastic guys and from there they turn into these human-animal figures- people in masks that look like what I think those little animals would be like. I picture the rabbit as this dreamy girl and the fox as this total hipster jerk. Something like that. I think they’ll turn back into toys at the end. I am also really inspired by stills from silent films, and photographic interpretations of classic paintings. I’m really loving Yeondoo Jung’s work, creating kids drawings as photographs, I wish I’d thought of it!

4. My personal favorite photograph or project is…

I really, really love the decades project. I used my personal collection of vintage clothing and it gave me this whole feel of living through past lives. I shot it on a large format camera and developed the film sheet by sheet. It was definitely a labor of love. During and after the project I said it was the biggest commitment to anything I’d ever made in my life. Sorry boyfriends.

5. The little girl portrait. On a sassy-scale, how sassy is she in real life?

Biggest sassbasket under 40 lbs I’ve ever met.

6. I support…

independent designers, I LOVE Etsy.

7. I’m against…

bats. They’re unnecessarily scary and sometimes when I write my name in a hurry I leave out the “e” and write “bats.” I really hate that.

8. My best recent purchase was…

the two-tone Built by Wendy dress. I love this dress, I just want to share it with the world.

9. I am currently obsessed with…

little plastic animals and old campaign buttons. Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits. Any small plastic things I can fit in my pockets

Be sure to explore her website for more prints! Her photos are also available for purchase on her Etsy page.

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